Portals are computer-based environments that can provide access to information networks and/or sets of services through the World Wide Web or other computer networks. A portal can present a unified and personalized view of enterprise information to employees, customers, and business partners. In many implementations, portal applications can include web application views designed as a portal.
In some instances, portals are capable of presenting multiple web application views within a single web interface. In addition to regular web content that can appear in a portal, portals provide the ability to display portlets (self-contained applications or content) in a single web interface. Portals can also support multiple pages with menu-based or custom navigation for accessing the individualized content and portlets for each page.
However, to date, even though portals are used to communicate content, there have been no readily available tools for allowing collaboration between users in a portal environment, nor are there are any easy means of creating collaboration communities in a portal environment. This is the area the invention addresses.